No I don’t trust WillyZalm, and I agree that he probably must have some hidden agenda. However, I agree with his political instincts, that is, I think he is spot-on when he states that the inner circle discussed the HST.
You keep stating that Zalm would move the province to the right of the Liberals. The BC “Liberals” are now a very-much right of center party that is in alignment with Harper’s Conservatives. Heh, how much to the right could Zalm go? The BC Liberals are not a moderate, centrist party. They are liberal in name only.
I figure the BC Liberals would be left of Harper’s Conservatives, while Cummin’s BC Conservatives would be the hard right of Harper’s Conservatives.
I base that on how social conservative they are relative to Harper’s Conservatives.
BTravenn
Except for how we voted in the referendum, I still don’t think we disagree all that much especially on the big picture.
I don’t trust Vander Zalm, but I don’t think he has a hidden agenda. I think (and I certainly could be wrong) his involvement was completely ego-driven. I am sure he was upset at the HST. Not too long ago I read an article that reminded us that Vander Zalm as his own Finance Minister contemplated getting rid of the sales tax. He also got rid of the tax on restaurant meals that Bennett’s Socreds introduced. So he definitely does not like consumption taxes for whatever reason. He probably complained with some friends and then he probably thought “Hey, wasn’t it my government (Rita Johnson’s at the end) that gave the province a referendum on whether or not we could use recall and initiative.” Then his ego and his quest for publicity took over.
On the other hand, Delaney and Tieleman, his partners at fight HST probably want to see a rejuvenation of the Conservative Party and for entirely different reasons. Delaney to gain power and Tieleman for a split vote.
I am not suggesting that people have to trust Dix. I was an NDP supporter who was not all that happy with the way the Glen Clark government acted. And I was disappointed that Dix was selected leader because of the baggage he carries from that era.
I am not sure if I am reading you correctly but you seem to be saying that trust issues cannot be used if we are constantly bringing up the past. I agree. Fast ferries and fudge-it budgets are in the past. But the problem with the trust issues involving the Liberals is that they are still in power. They have to live with the things they have said and done right now. If they lose the next election and then the NDP continually bring up the HST debacle then I will be the first to say that is no longer an issue. Even ripped up contracts and BCRail will lose their relevance when a new crop of Liberals take over. But the current group are still part of the Campbell regime and they are certainly a part of the last mandate.
So right now it is an issue. I may not believe Vander Zalm concerning how much the Liberals knew before the election but I think I can believe Rafe Mair who also claims they had to have known. And even then it doesn’t matter. Carole Taylor as finance minister rejected the HST. So obviously at some point it had been discussed. How it got from the rejected to the accepted stage is what the trust issue is all about.
Despite an worldwide economic meltdown that occurred six months previous they still painted a rosy picture of a small deficit during the election. They were wrong or they were disingenuous or they lied. They get a 1.6B windfall enough to cover their over-deficit deficit and suddenly they are on board with the HST.
You suggested that the 1.6B may be enough of a factor. I disagree. If it were good policy then the 1.6B is just bonus. If it isn’t good policy then a windfall of about 2% of one year’s budget is way too insignificant an amount to tie the province to something that would be here indefinitely.
If it were good policy - the most important thing they could do for the province - then it should have been on their radar.
The Liberals can’t have it both ways.
So that is why I have a hard time accepting anything Kevin Falcon says about the state of today’s economy and how he plans to address it. I’ll call ll it, as you call it, a healthy skepticism.
From the be careful what you wish for file:
I don’t trust Zalm because I think he has a hidden agenda. The provincial Liberals swallowed up old Socred’s support but they are not Socred. After resigning as premier Zalm supported a provincial Reform party and campaigned unsuccessfully against the Liberals. Zalm has agendas. There is a lot about the provincial Liberals for Zalm and the re-emergent provincial conservatives to dislike.
One can debate the details, but the Liberals are a greener government than Socred ever was, as reflected in why Harcourt gave those issues such high priority.
PLA’s comment about social conservatism is well taken. Premier Zalm was an avowed social conservative. Those voices are far less evident in the Liberal government than they were under Socred or in the Harper Conservative party today.
The Liberals have had surprising success building relationships with first nations, which reflects moderate, pragmatic thinking within the party. There are many issues no doubt, but the situation is more constructive than in the Socred era or for that matter when the NDP was in government.
I don’t think Zalm lead the anti-HST campaign to give his old adversary the NDP a political windfall.
Hopefully Dix will bring some positive ideas to BC politics rather than the negative rhetoric that the NDP has passed off as a political program for too many years. They’re a party that seems to have run out of ideas.
You can use trust issues, just like some NDP opponents still bring up fast ferries, but they have a limited shelf life and you end up appealing to the party faithful rather than to swing voters whose support the NDP needs. Support us because the other guys are untrustworthy is not a very convincing platform coming from any politician. Hopefully Dix will move beyond the rancour.
Other than to NDP loyalists those topics (they’re not even issues) lost their relevance quite some time ago. The NDP needs new talking points.
Rafe Mair makes his living blowing hot air.
The global economic crisis was not a single event, and the problems have been and are ongoing. I don’t think that any finance minister in any government anywhere is self-confident about how to deal with those issues. If the NDP thinks that they have a crystal ball and a good grasp of those issues they’re wrong, disingenuous or lying.
I said the $1.6 billion was a factor not ‘enough of a factor’, and collecting that amount from income taxes would take a lot more than a 2% increase. To improve international competitiveness, most leading economies have abandoned cascading taxes like the PST where the government takes revenue from every transaction. That was why Paul Martin, a weak PM but an astute finance minister and a decent chap, proposed the HST.
HST is good policy. It is interesting that in the Ontario election no one, not even the NDP, is proposing to scrap the HST. thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/BC-Poli … _election/
Unfortunately HST suffered from totally inept implementation in BC. I don’t see where speculation and hyperbole about trust adds anything to that conclusion, other than to give the NDP something to talk about, given that they don’t seem to have much else to offer us these days, which is most unfortunate and a real shame.
[quote=“PLA”]I figure the BC Liberals would be left of Harper’s Conservatives, while Cummin’s BC Conservatives would be the hard right of Harper’s Conservatives.
I base that on how social conservative they are relative to Harper’s Conservatives.[/quote]
Hmmmmmm…contract stripping, refusing to engage in collective bargaining, and union crushing. How exactly are the BC Liberals different from Harper’s Conservatives?
How’s the BC Liberals any different to when Paul Martin was Federal Finance Minister back in the good ol’ Chretien days? O_o
I don’t recall Paul Martin ever ignoring rulings from the Supreme Court.
Granted, but the last Federal Liberal government did their fair share of legislating to end the strike and impose a non-negotiable contract on them (or without?).
;
[quote=“BTravenn”]
Rafe Mair makes his living blowing hot air.
The global economic crisis was not a single event, and the problems have been and are ongoing. I don’t think that any finance minister in any government anywhere is self-confident about how to deal with those issues. If the NDP thinks that they have a crystal ball and a good grasp of those issues they’re wrong, disingenuous or lying.
Unfortunately HST suffered from totally inept implementation in BC. I don’t see where speculation and hyperbole about trust adds anything to that conclusion, other than to give the NDP something to talk about, given that they don’t seem to have much else to offer us these days, which is most unfortunate and a real shame.[/quote]
I really do think we are going around in circles.
You can choose whomever you want to believe or not believe. Rafe Mair may make his living blowing hot air but we could say the same thing about certain politicians.
I am not suggesting that the NDP could have done a better job or been more cognizant of the 2008 economic meltdown. My point was that the Liberals during an election campaign 6-8 months after the meltdown continued to paint a rosy picture. A couple of months later after the election the real numbers are known.
They claim that the single most important thing they could do for the economy was not on their radar. My point: the single most important thing they could have done for the economy had been available for several years and been rejected by the previous finance minister. That single most important thing they could do for the economy didn’t suddenly become the single most important thing they could do for the economy (unless you count the $1.6B which is considerable but shouldn’t be the deciding factor.) That single most important thing they could have done for the economy was available to them and should have been known to them prior to the election and trumpeted as the major plank in their platform. It wasn’t.
So the HST was defeated. Maybe, as you claim, the HST is good policy and we have missed an opportunity. The question is why. I think it was lost because people didn’t believe them when they said it was the single most important thing they could do for the economy. They didn’t believe them when they said that a tax shift would ultimately help them and not just big business. Nobody was mesmerized by Bill Vander Zalm and his cohorts at fight HST; it lost because too many people didn’t believe the Liberals.
No doubt we have to move on. However, when Kevin Falcon says something, I am sorry, but I have to take it with a big dose of skepticism. That is my whole point.
But that’s not why I wanted to post.
I did some research. I talked to a funeral home (not Ferguson’s so I can’t vouch for local numbers). The conversation was quick and I asked for ballpark figures.
A basic memorial service with cremation $3508 (I am not sure if that included an urn but you can get one for $100 or so).
If you want to have the urn placed in a niche (that’s the word I was looking for) $3200.
If you want a reception, the person figured $5-6 per person so in my case about 20 bucks but for most another 500 or so. Total cost: around 7000
A memorial service including burial cost $4471.
A basic casket about $1000. They can run much higher.
She wasn’t exactly sure of the plot because that was city but she thought around $1000.
A standard flat headstone: $1000-$1500.
Total cost with reception: anywhere from 8-10000.
All of that was subject to HST but not PST, an added $500-700.
I know this doesn’t have any bearing on whether the HST is good or bad. I was just pointing out that more than pop and chips were affected.
Indeed we could. I’ve never been a Rafe Mair fan by the way.
Good. I think that these are challenging times for all finance ministers in all governments, and I don’t expect that they will always get it right.
Was it like Glen Clark’s fudge-it budget, or did they just paint too rosy a picture, which is something that politicians tend to do?
I don’t put much in what a former finance minister, what’s her name again, said or didn’t say before leaving office. The issue is whether HST is better policy than a cascading sales tax like PST.
I don’t know if the $1.6 billion was available all along. I doubt it. My impression is that Harper made an offer that wasn’t on the table before.
You say that the $1.6 billion is “considerable but shouldn’t be the deciding factor”. Okay, but tell that to government employees whose jobs will be eliminated or whose pay raises will be deferred because the government now has to pay that money back.
Skepticism is a virtue, and should be extended to the NDP and most definitely to Zalm. Whether people will admit to being mesmerized or not, Zalm was a huge factor. Right after HST was introduced, Carole James said that it was here to stay, because it would be too difficult to reverse. I clearly remember her saying that. That was surprising candour and commendable pragmatism. I think Keith Baldry’s comments in the article cited earlier bear re-reading with that in mind.
leaderpost.com/news/Politics … story.html
Zalm successfully reframed the issue and outflanked her to become Campbell’s dominant opponent. It was quite a performance, I’ll give him that. James then had to get on board with the anti-HST bandwagon, and she never seemed to recover. I think that in some respects Zalm’s success was not only at the expense of Campbell but also of James. I doubt we would be having this discussion, including about repaying $1.6 billion, if James was still opposition leader.
[quote=“DWhite”]
But that’s not why I wanted to post.
I did some research. I talked to a funeral home (not Ferguson’s so I can’t vouch for local numbers). The conversation was quick and I asked for ballpark figures.
A basic memorial service with cremation $3508 (I am not sure if that included an urn but you can get one for $100 or so).
If you want to have the urn placed in a niche (that’s the word I was looking for) $3200.
If you want a reception, the person figured $5-6 per person so in my case about 20 bucks but for most another 500 or so. Total cost: around 7000
A memorial service including burial cost $4471.
A basic casket about $1000. They can run much higher.
She wasn’t exactly sure of the plot because that was city but she thought around $1000.
A standard flat headstone: $1000-$1500.
Total cost with reception: anywhere from 8-10000.
All of that was subject to HST but not PST, an added $500-700.
I know this doesn’t have any bearing on whether the HST is good or bad. I was just pointing out that more than pop and chips were affected.[/quote]
Okay, so when the funeral home starts paying PST on the costs of their inputs, like urns, headstones, flowers etc, instead of getting the HST back, do you think that the total cost of your funeral will be going down? I don’t think that you should revise your estimates.
I have two left feet and I’m anti-social, but you still keep asking me to dance.
My basic point all along has been that I am finding it increasingly difficult to believe anything that the Liberals say.
I have given several reasons why I feel that way. We can meander down the road of Adrian Dix, or Bill Vander Zalm, or the HST, or chips and pop and funerals. We can decide that it is time to move on. All of that makes interesting reading and we can all keep score with debating points.
The fact still remains that a lot of British Columbians are like me. We are finding it increasingly difficult to believe anything the Liberals say. That is the main reason why the HST was defeated. As skilled as Vander Zalm might be, he couldn’t have won the province over if people trusted the Liberals. The HST might be the single most important thing they could do for the economy but they were not believed. It wasn’t just that it was poorly introduced; they weren’t believed when they said the tax shift would ultimately benefit the province. And they weren’t believed because of past actions.
Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.
You are free to say that the Liberals can be trusted. You can say that they have never done anything that would cause this mistrust. You can say it is important to move on even though they have misled us. You can take each of my sentence and thrash away at them. That’s all fine.
But, I am tired of going in circles so I will be hopping off at the next corner. (I thought I would end my involvement with a mixed metaphor.)
[quote=“DWhite”]
The fact still remains that a lot of British Columbians are like me. We are finding it increasingly difficult to believe anything the Liberals say. [/quote]
Agreed.
[quote=“hitest”]
[quote=“DWhite”]
The fact still remains that a lot of British Columbians are like me. We are finding it increasingly difficult to believe anything the Liberals say. [/quote]
Agreed.[/quote]
Not a surprise. I found it increasingly difficulty during the referendum campaign to believe Zalm. I also came to appreciate why, after the HST was announced, Carole James was reluctant to commit to scrap it if she formed a government. Later of course, like so many others, she was swept up by Zalm’s juggernaut. That encouraged perceptions that she was a weak leader and ultimately contributed to her demise.
I’ve mostly supported the NDP in the past, but I don’t think that they have come out of the HST debacle a whole lot stronger. They have moved from a leader who no doubt had shortcomings, but was a break from the NDP that gave us fudge-it budgets, years of deficit financing and fast ferries, to Dix who harkens back to that era and seems to have difficulty giving reliable evidence to the police.
Hopefully the NDP and its supporters will come up with some new ideas and a program that might inspire us, something more than vote for us because the other guys can’t be trusted. That doesn’t work with a lot of us swing voters. We tend to be skeptical of all of them.